


The Ashley Problem

by EarlGrayJasmine



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: 1880s, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussion of Abortion, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28362576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarlGrayJasmine/pseuds/EarlGrayJasmine
Summary: It's 1888 and the Five have just found out that one of their own is the infamous Jack the Ripper.Before she can grieve, Magnus must go to Watson for help with a pressing problem, one it's imperative she solve before John returns. Her life--and someone else's--depend on it.
Relationships: Helen Magnus & James Watson, Montague John Druitt/Helen Magnus
Kudos: 7





	The Ashley Problem

It was John.

It had always been John.

The Ripper was one of them all along.

The remaining members of the Five each took the news differently. Griffin flickered out of view as soon as he heard; the others weren’t sure where he’d run off to. Tesla had gone to his favorite pub and drunk so much that even his vampiric metabolism couldn’t keep up. He was currently standing on a table giving an “I always knew he was bad news” speech to the cheers of a crowd who was sure he must be making it all up—vampire blood and teleporting killers. Watson was holed up in his study with his oldest, largest bottle of whiskey. If he had the will to stand up out of his chair he might even mix himself a seven percent solution.

And then, of course, there was Helen.

The truth had caught up with her like a fever. For months she had known something was wrong, little aches and pains that she could brush of as coincidence, irrelevance. Now, in an instant, she was burning up.

“John!” she called. “This ends here.”

After he had escaped the scene of the last murder the others had retreated into their grief. Not Helen. Not yet. She had a hunch on where she’d find him, and she had been right.

John looked even more menacing in the dim light of the alleyway. His tall frame, his strong hands, the mischievous glint that lived in his smile—all these things she loved about him now turned against her. He stood before a working girl who couldn’t see the blade concealed behind his back.

But Helen could.

“Helen,” he said, strolling up to the girl, “what a lovely surprise. Molly, I would like you to meet my fiancee—or should I say former fiancee—Helen Magnus. _Doctor_ Helen Magnus.” The way he spat her name made Helen want to fold in on herself.

“Doctor,” Molly said, impressed. “I’m pleased to meet you Ma’am.”

Molly looked around. She could tell she had gotten herself in the middle of something, though in her wildest dreams she wouldn’t guess exactly what. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”

Druitt grabbed Molly’s arm and pulled her to him sharply.

“Stay. I insist.”

“John, let me help you before you make things worse,” Helen said.

“And how is that possible?” he said. “I’ve already murdered what, seven whores? How could one more make the slightest difference?”

Molly looked at him with fresh terror. “Murdered?”

John smiled that sick, charming smile then held the blade to her throat.

Molly whimpered but Helen stood expressionless. Whatever reaction he wanted from her he wouldn’t get it.

John looked pointedly at her. “What more have I to lose?”

“Your power is driving you mad John. I can help.” One last time. She would only ask him once more.

“My power is all I have left.”

Helen drew her revolver. “Let. Her. Go.”

John looked straight into her eyes and she into his. They held there for a moment, gun and knife both poised to strike. Neither wanted to be the one to give in.

Then Druitt’s face softened. He released the hand he had clapped over Molly’s mouth and said, “As the lady wishes.”

A part of Helen’s heart jolted with hope. If she had finally gotten through to John, maybe there was saving him yet.

The rest of her knew it had been too easy.

In one swift motion John slit Molly’s throat and Helen fired.

John and the bullet vanished in a crackle of red-electric haze. Or really, the Ripper vanished. It was becoming clear to Helen that the John Druitt she loved had been gone for some time.

Helen rushed up to the woman on the ground but she knew she was dead before she even got a finger to her neck. Jack the Ripper showed no mercy.

There was nothing to be done for her. Helen had to leave before anyone found the body. It wasn’t that she expect to be blamed. If anyone came up and asked her what she was doing here—what had happened to the woman lying dead on the cobblestones, who had killed her—she wasn’t sure what she would say. Helen had the feeling that if she opened her mouth at this moment, all that would come out was a strangled scream.

Helen choked down the bile burning hot in her throat. The hands that killed this girl were hands that had touched her, loved her, slid a diamond ring onto her finger. She found it now as she marched out of the alley. Helen slipped the ring off her finger and threw into the gutter without so much as a glance. Let it rot in the filth, just like him.

With an outstretched hand she hailed a carriage. She wanted nothing more than to give the driver her own address, to go home and find John there, sane and healthy, waiting to take her to dinner. But Helen knew that wasn’t want she would find. She would find the kind of stillness that claws you open. She would find the gifts he had given her, playbills to _Twelfth Night_ and pressed flowers from their strolls through the park. She might even find her father waiting anxiously in the parlor for news of what had become of his future son-in-law. Helen knew it would break her completely. Besides she had one more matter to attend to, and it couldn’t wait.

The carriage rolled to a stop in front of a familiar brownstone. Helen paid the driver and hurried up the steps. She took the stairs two at a time until she reached the second floor apartment.

“James!” she shouted. “I know you’re in there.”

Under normal circumstances Helen would never dream of being so rude, but tonight the nervous energy roiling inside her needed somewhere to go, so she tapped the knocker until the opening door pulled it out of reach.

Watson stood behind it and he looked terrible. “Helen…”

“I need to talk to you. Right now.”

He studied her a moment, coming to the conclusion that he wouldn’t know peace until he heard her out. James begrudgingly stepped aside to let her in.

He shut the door behind her. Helen looked around to ensure they were alone. The flat was cozy in that special way of a cluttered study, though tonight there was more bare wallpaper than Helen had ever seen here. Torn scraps of newsprint littered the ground. The rest, she guessed, had already been thrown in the fire. Watson’s notes on the Ripper case. Obviously he didn’t need them now.

Helen grabbed a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the table. “Have you been drinking?”

“Haven’t you?”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not enough.” Watson grabbed for the bottle but Helen pulled it out of reach.

“Good,” she said. She found its cork and stoppered it, placing the bottle on the mantle and herself between it and James. “I need you sober. You’re have a surgery tomorrow.”

James had to admit that the next day had ceased to exist as far as he was concerned, but he was certain he would have remembered something so important on his schedule. Besides, he was in no state for the scalpel.

“It can wait.”

“No,” Helen said. “It can’t.”

James studied her. There was a peculiar urgency in her expression but he couldn’t place it.

“Who’s the patient?”

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” she said. “John’s betrayal shocked us all but for you I imagine it’s particularly bitter.”

“Why, because of all those nights he sat with me sipping port at the Regents’ Club, listening to me prattle on about the Ripper case?” James began to pace across the floor. “Listening to my theories, weighing in on my suspects, as if it wasn’t him all along?”

Helen jumped as James slammed the side of his fist against the wall. A few loose books fell from their shelves.

“Something like that,” Helen offered.

“I’m the biggest fool in the world.”

“James…” Helen could see a deep rage building in his eyes. She put a hand on his arm but he shook it off.

“There had to have been some clue, some sign. I could have stopped him.”

“None of us could.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “I should have seen it!”

James took another step toward Helen, and the liquor bottle behind her. “Give it to me.”

She stood fast. “I can’t.”

“What does it matter now?” He shook his head. Their lives as they had known them yesterday were over. The Five was over. What did she care if he got drunk?

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Right, your mystery surgery?”

“Yes.”

Seeing she wasn’t relenting, James stepped away from the fireplace and ran his hand through his hair. “Fine. What is it? Who’s the patient?”

Helen didn’t answer.

He turned back, wondering why she had stopped meeting his eyes. “Who’s the patient Helen?” he asked again.

It took all the strength Helen had left to force the words out of her mouth. “I am.”

“What?”

Watson was back in front of her in an instant, but instead of trying for the whiskey bottle he put both hands on Helen’s shoulders. Concern doused his anger for the moment.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” He knew she had tried to go after Druitt that night, but she hadn’t seem wounded when she came in. Still he asked, “What did John do to you? If he injured you Helen I’ll skin him alive.”

“He didn’t injure me,” she said, and that was true. Helen found herself looking at the floor and the fire, anything to avoid the look that was about to fall on James’s face. “I’m pregnant.”

His laugh came out dry and hollow. “Funny, I could have sworn your wedding wasn’t until next spring.”

“I didn’t come for your judgement, I came for your help.”

“And you thought I’d what, just breeze right past this?”

“I’ve hoped for crazier.”

“We put up with a variety of improprieties from you Helen, but this? What were you thinking?”

“That our private affairs are none of your business.”

“They seem to be now.”

“We were to be married,” Helen said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She rubbed her bare finger where John’s ring used to be.

Anger soured James’s indignation.

“What do you expect me to do, get rid of it?” By the way he spat out the words, he didn’t seem particularly pleased with that idea.

“If it comes to that, yes.”

“If it comes to it? You do realize there are only two ways this ends? A child or…not.”

“That subzero refrigeration unit you and Nikola have been working on,” Helen interjected. “You have a prototype, yes? And you fixed that inconsistency in the cooling cycles?”

“It fluctuates within an acceptable range.” James was surprised at this change in topic but his not-inconsiderable ego couldn’t resist a chance to talk about his work. “But the mechanism is the size of a small train car and all for a freezing chamber the size of my first. I’m quite hopeful about this technology as a prototype but for now we could barely freeze a single sample—”

All at once he realized what she intended. If they could keep the embryo at a low enough temperature it could theoretically—and James had to stress it was only in theory—be revived at a later date.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Can’t I?”

“I appreciate that you’re in a tight spot, but this is madness.”

 _A tight spot_. Helen wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or scream. James may have been close with John but he could not fathom the abyss of a spot that she was in.

“He killed another girl tonight.” Helen hadn’t wanted to say it, as if that might somehow make it less real, but there it was. John Druitt, her fiancee, the love of her life—or so she’d thought—had murdered another woman in cold blood.

James stiffened.

“In an ally off of Berner Street. I tried to stop him. He—he looked me straight in the eye as he slit her throat.” It hit her then that there was no saving him. The man she knew, the man she loved….Helen’s next words came out so choked they were barely audible. “He’s gone.”

James went to her then and clasped a strong hand on her arm. Helen felt like his grip was all that was keeping her from falling through the floor.

James’s expression softened. His face flushed as he offered a thought. “One of us could…” he started, but Griffin was taken and there wasn’t enough wine in the world to convince Nikola. That left him. “I could marry you, if you wanted.”

“That’s very chivalrous of you James, but unnecessary.”

“No, what’s necessary is an experimental surgery,” James said with more than a hint of incredulity.

“I’ve made up my mind.”

“The fetus won’t make it,” he said. “There’s almost no chance—”

“Then so be it.”

James was surprised by the coolness of her voice, but he had greater concerns.

“You might not either.” Anger was seeping once again into his bones. At John, yes, butalso at Helen. He knew it was misplaced and yet he couldn’t stake it. He couldn’t stand her being so cavalier. “You understand that, right?”

James steadied himself before he went on.

“You could die on the table,” he said, trying again to make her see that this was madness. Any surgery was risky, let alone one as uncharted as what she was proposing. “For god’s sake Helen do you understand what you’re asking of me?”

One moment she looked smaller than he could ever remember seeing her, like a shadow of herself. The next she spun on him with the ferocity he’d become accustomed to, though it wasn’t often aimed at him. James fought the urge to take a step back.

“I’m asking you to try your best not to kill me so John doesn’t get the chance!” she spit back. “He’ll return, and if he finds me like this he’ll kill me. If I’ve had the child by then he’ll kill us both. There’s nowhere on this earth where we could get far enough away. I’m certain of it.”

James took that step back now. For all his genius intellect, that just didn’t compute. And it pained him to hear.

“Why?” he asked. “Why would he do something so heinous?”

“As opposed to murdering innocent strangers, which isn’t?”

“You know what I meant.”

Helen’s face contorted into a guilty grimace and her voice came out smaller. “I slipped up tonight. Everything was unraveling so fast and I—” The heartbreak took her by surprise. Helen thought she was getting rather numb to it all, but replaying her last encounters with John nearly took her breath away. Helen felt like she might finally come undone.

James led her to a nearby armchair and she let him. He took a knee at her feet.

“I was trying to appeal to his sensibilities,” she managed. “I had followed him to his apartments. I confronted him. I knew by then that it was true, that John was really…” She couldn’t say it, _the Ripper._ “I supposed I was still hoping there was a way to get him back.”

“And?”

“I said ‘we.’”

James waited for more.

“I told him—begged him really—that I needed him. That _we_ were going to need him.”

* * *

John had pounced on her then. His apartments were small and dark, and the shadows made John looked all the more deranged as he towered over Helen, inches from her face.

“We?” he said with a sickeningly curious smile.

It took everything Helen had not to recoil from him. She fought to keep the horror from her face as she searched his eyes for some sign, anything, to prove that the man she knew wasin there. All she saw was hatred.

He paced around her, looking her over like a butcher calculating his cuts.

All at once John was behind her, a knife to her throat.

“Something you’ve been meaning to tell me Helen?”

“You’re sick John. I can help you.”

He ignored her deflection. “No?”

John held Helen to him with a forceful grip. With the other hand he ran the knife along her body, over her collarbone and down the bodice of her dress. The blade danced just above her skin. He brought it to rest at her abdomen. One finger at a time John adjusted his grip so that the blade pointed between the ribs of her corset. He could gut her in a single stroke, if he felt so inclined. The fetus certainly wouldn’t survive, and unless someone found her very quickly, Helen wouldn’t either.

“Are you sure?”

His voice was ashes on her ears. Helen felt hot. She could feel her pulse racing and she worried that this close John could too.

Helen did the only thing she could think of. She wrapped her hand over John’s and pushed the knife—ever so slightly—into her stomach, daring him to do it.

“I’m sure,” she said coldly.

John considered for a moment, then took her actions as proof enough. He released his grip and strode in front of her. He took out a cloth and carefully polished his knife.

“You have seemed different these last weeks,” he offered, a last attempt to bait her.

“You’re the one who’s different John.” Now that the immediate danger was gone her fear was being steadily replaced by fury. “Your mind’s been poisoned, but it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t who you are. I can help you.”

“Like you helped me the last time?” John said. “You did this to me!”

“The treatment wasn’t working but we’ll try another.” Guilt cut her up in ways John’s blade could never dream of. Of all the patients she had treated, of all the abnormals she had helped, she couldn’t save the one person she needed to. “We’ll keep trying until you’re well again, until you come back to me. Please John, I need you.” This time she was careful to add, “James and Nikola and Nigel and I, we need you.”

John looked at her with a twisted mix of malice and delight.

“Then I’m yours if you can catch me.”

John disappeared with an electric snap. Helen retrieved the revolver from the holster at her ankle. She hadn’t been able to reach it before when John was so close to her. Or perhaps she hadn’t wanted to. But she had no choice now. If John was on the loose in this state, every woman on the streets was in danger. And Helen had a sickening feeling he hadn’t gone far.

She readied her weapon and ran out the door to find him.

* * *

“I managed to convince him I meant us, the Five, but that will only last so long,” Helen told James. “You should have seen the violence in his eyes. I’m certain that if I’d told him the truth he would have killed me then and there.”

James took her hand in comfort. She looked pointedly at him.

“I don’t intend to give him another chance.”

James shifted uneasily. His gaze became unfocused as he searched for another solution, but even his brilliant mind couldn’t see a better way out. Finally he took a deep breath.

“Alright,” James said. “What do you need me to do?”

**Author's Note:**

> The section from “John! This ends here” through "As the lady wishes" is transcribed from the flashback scene in episode 102, Sanctuary For All Part II.


End file.
